Going indie

James Kelsey still has the napkins on which his movie script was scratched out over pints of Guinness at a Denver bar.

So people really do write movies that way. At least Kelsey does. Kelsey, 28, who graduated from Greeley West High School in 1994, didn’t think he’d start out this way, sketching out movies on napkins and entering the finished product in Sundance and Project Greenlight, a contest that gives starters such as him a chance.

He thought he’d do it the right way. He planned to go to film school in London, study hard, learn about filmmaking and graduate ready to make his name on the independent circuit before they signed him to direct, say, “Spider-Man 7.”

Sept. 11, 2001, changed a lot of things. It also changed Kelsey’s plans.

He was working as a Web developer for a company in Denver. The business worked with three other companies in New York City. On Sept. 11, three chief operating officers of those companies were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. After that, the Denver company went bankrupt.

Kelsey was being paid insane amounts of money, he said, and was sitting on fat stock options. Suddenly, Kelsey couldn’t afford the $75,000 tuition the London Film School required. He could barely afford a cheeseburger.

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But Kelsey, like many Americans, was determined not to let Sept. 11 take him down. Instead, he took the truly indie way to filmmaking: He did it all himself. It took him 21/2 years, from script to finish, but he did it, and now he’s shopping “Spotless” at film festivals, distributors and Project Greenlight, where he made the first cut of 250 finalists from 1,700 who submitted shorts.

“Spotless,” mind you, isn’t some cute little flick shot with a video camera bought at Best Buy with ketchup special effects, a cap pistol and sunglasses as the only props.

It’s a full-length film, shot in hi-fi. Kelsey’s attorney won’t let him tell us how much he paid for the film, other than it’s “less than a million.”

“You could easily buy a house with the money we’ve spent on it,” Kelsey said. “A nice house. A really nice house.”

So how did he, a guy with no film degree, get the money to make a real film, one that he could honestly submit to Sundance without chuckling? Kelsey summoned the same determination this country did after the tragic terrorist attacks.

That and he drank Guinness and wrote on some napkins with his roommate one night in Denver.

* * *

It all started with cuts and bruises and scars.

Kelsey was 15 when he got hooked on special effects. He worked for Distortions, Greeley’s very own little horror studio, for a while. He did haunted houses at home. And he did the best scars, cuts and bruises. They looked real. That’s mostly why his parents, Ron and Sheila Kelsey of Greeley, had confidence in James when he told them he was going to make a movie.

“We knew he would be able to do it and that it would be good,” Sheila said. “We’ve seen the work he’s done before, and he’s always had a lot of confidence.”

Kelsey had to use his father’s skills as a businessman to get it done. Ron owned the first rent-to-own businesses in Greeley. Most movie ideas die because Kelsey can’t find anyone to fund them. So he got a stack of books as tall as him and boned up on how to get movie partners. He made connections and flew around the country to dig up investors. He found 16. It took a year and a half.

“We started with a few people who we knew, and they introduced us to their friends,” Kelsey said, “and it just kept rolling.”

Once he got the money, he called for auditions. He received 600 head shots and narrowed the list down to 150 who auditioned for him. He narrowed that down to 40 and picked his 10 main cast members out of those. One of them, the film’s hit man and one of the lead characters, is portrayed by Bill LeVasseur, a good friend of Kelsey’s and a well-known Colorado actor who also acts as a host for Dish Network’s infomercial channel.

“Spotless” is a movie about, among other things, Jackson Hash, LeVasseur’s character, and his wish to come clean after spending years as a hit man. But some people never come clean, the movie asserts. It’s one of those movies that features lots of storylines and characters, like what made Quentin Tarantino with “Pulp Fiction” and Guy Ritchie with “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” Those two directors, in fact, are big influences on Kelsey.

During that night with the napkins, Kelsey took a lot of his short film ideas and put them all together for “Spotless,” along with a few twists.

Turns out he didn’t need film school as much as he needed another big stack of books and coffee with some of Denver’s best filmmakers.

“These guys really are pretty cool,” Kelsey said. “You’d be surprised how much they’re willing to share over coffee.”

Ironically, shooting the movie was the shortest job. It took 21 days, each 18 hours long, to get it done.

“We took one day off,” he said. “It was grueling.”

He will start by entering it in the big film festivals and go from there. It’s almost impossible to get into the huge ones such as Sundance, but that’s where he says he has to start.

“You have to start with the big dogs because they want your film to premier at their festival,” Kelsey said. “You almost have to know someone to get into one.”

Even so, Kelsey fields calls almost every day from distributors who want to see the film. He also wants to sponsor a screening in Los Angeles to create competition among distributors. No one wants to be the one who misses out on the next big thing. He has a huge list of festivals in Toronto, New York and Europe.

Kelsey submitted the trailer for “Spotless” to “Project Greenlight” in hopes of making the second cut. He found out Wednesday the movie didn’t make it, but Kelsey is optimistic that he made it into the top 250 that were submitted.

“My whole goal is to get enough attention so we can talk about ‘Spotless,’ ” Kelsey said. “If you see me on TV, I’ll be wearing a ‘Spotless’ T-shirt the whole time.”

In the meantime, between the festivals and the pitches to distributors, he will continue to work part-time at a retail store in technical support, helping people with their computers and waiting for the big break.

He already has a few fans.

“He’s done an excellent job,” Sheila said. “It’s wonderful the way it’s shot. He will make a very good living doing this. It’s going to make it. The sky’s going to be the limit for him.”

Of course, Mom is always a little biased. Once the rest of the world starts noticing, he can celebrate in a bar with lots of Guinness and even more napkins. After all, you never know when the next movie idea will hit.